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A review by befsk
All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders
2.0
I can understand why some people might like this book but I am definitely not one of those people. It was too... Pleased with itself. Too ready to make hipster/nerdy references. The characters were too obnoxious, too random.
I think random is probably the best word to describe the book. I've never been a fan of random. I'm just not sure what I'm supposed to have 'got' from forcing myself to trudge through this one. And despite only supposedly being just over 300 pages, it was a real slog. We'd get going on something interesting and then we'd shift focus and I'd be left disillusioned and uninterested all over again. Being children went on too long. Being friends went on too long. Being not friends went on too long.
Random: Patricia's sister being an animal torturer. Random: the guy who was made of uncontrollable nature and couldn't leave his bookstore. Random: the fate (or purpose in the first place) of Mr Rose.
Bizarre book that I just could not immerse myself in, which is odd because the writing itself wasn't terrible. It was the lack of characters I could relate to or even like, it was the plot that staggered around drunk, it was the - now I think about it - utterly garbage dialogue.
Honestly, maybe if I hadn't read this so soon after reading Armada by Ernest Cline, I might not have disliked it so much, but the writing in this reminded me of Cline's writing to a small degree, mostly the smug references to things I either didn't grasp because they're not of my generation or because they're referencing something unexplained in the context of the book. I hate that. Why do sci-fi writers do this? It's jarring.
I think random is probably the best word to describe the book. I've never been a fan of random. I'm just not sure what I'm supposed to have 'got' from forcing myself to trudge through this one. And despite only supposedly being just over 300 pages, it was a real slog. We'd get going on something interesting and then we'd shift focus and I'd be left disillusioned and uninterested all over again. Being children went on too long. Being friends went on too long. Being not friends went on too long.
Random: Patricia's sister being an animal torturer. Random: the guy who was made of uncontrollable nature and couldn't leave his bookstore. Random: the fate (or purpose in the first place) of Mr Rose.
Bizarre book that I just could not immerse myself in, which is odd because the writing itself wasn't terrible. It was the lack of characters I could relate to or even like, it was the plot that staggered around drunk, it was the - now I think about it - utterly garbage dialogue.
Honestly, maybe if I hadn't read this so soon after reading Armada by Ernest Cline, I might not have disliked it so much, but the writing in this reminded me of Cline's writing to a small degree, mostly the smug references to things I either didn't grasp because they're not of my generation or because they're referencing something unexplained in the context of the book. I hate that. Why do sci-fi writers do this? It's jarring.